


An Energy Like No Other

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Series: The Fast and the NBTs [6]
Category: Fast Five (2011), Fast and the Furious Series, Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, F/M, Fate & Destiny, Gift Fic, Het and Slash, M/M, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-03 05:52:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1066705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brian had never asked for that kind of recognition, just the power to protect his family.  Though possibly, that was what had gotten him into this situation in the first place.... </p><p>Possibly, it was what had <i>always</i> gotten him into these kinds of situations, he admitted wryly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Brian

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YMFaery (Young_Murdered_Faery)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Young_Murdered_Faery/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I hadn't intended to repost this piece from the Wishlist comm until I had the time to add a couple more chapters; but in light of this weekend's news, I thought I'd go ahead and put it up. It was first posted [Nov 26](http://wishlist-fic.livejournal.com/105410.html); the last bit of dialogue between Brian and Dom raises the hairs on my arms, now.
> 
> RIP, Paul Walker; my prayers are with your family and friends.

Brian stared out at the destruction marring what must have been a gorgeous stretch of natural forest, fingers tightening on Bestia's door handle. He'd been a little skeptical when Sideswipe had led them down a dirt track off the major highways, but there was no way to mistake the aftermath of a vicious brawl between mechanical lifeforms. He'd seen enough of that kind of damage in his days undercover with Sector Seven-- or hell, even during his team's rampage through Rio. At least in this neck of the woods, there'd only been two bystanders to worry about.

He could trace the path of Sam's flight by the massive gouges torn in the earth, left by clawed feet bigger than the kid himself. Whole trees lay like jackstraws on the damaged turf, surrounded by shrapnel sprays of splinters, blown off their roots by weapons fire or brute force. And here and there, tongues of sullen flame licked up a bare, stripped trunk; the scents of alien fuel and molten metal were sharp in the air from where bullets and heated blades had carved through armor into vital machinery.

Cybertronians could take a lot of damage, though, without deactivating; and whatever had happened here, only one Decepticon corpse had been left behind, sprawled on its back amidst the wreckage with only scraps of metal and wiring left above its torso. From the shape of the engines beneath it, and the shards of rotor scattered in the grass nearby, it had once been a helicopter-- probably the same one that had kidnapped Sam and Mikaela.

For a robot that championed peace, Optimus Prime was 4.3 metric tons of badass when he was angry, and the rest of his people weren't far behind him. "Damn. I hope they got here in time."

"Yeah. Looks like we missed the party," Dom murmured, circling the Charger to stand next to Brian.

Sideswipe had taken off after Ironhide and the twins as soon as they'd arrived, chasing the Decepticons who'd survived the attack. Bumblebee and Ratchet, though, had cornered Prime a little further up the road. The twenty-eight-foot red and blue 'bot looked... surprisingly shiny, as though his paint was factory fresh, not as though he'd just come out of a battle.

Even stranger, Prime wasn't reacting to whatever they were gesturing wildly about; he just... stood in the middle of the road, one hand cupped in front of his chest as though holding something precious.

Something man-sized, dressed in a black tee shirt and jeans, clutching tightly to Optimus' fingers.

"Look, I think that's Sam," Brian hissed. "And it looks like Bee has Mikaela."

"So they got the kids back," Hobbs mused, walking over with Monica from where Belle had parked. "Why do I get the feeling that's not the end of the story?"

"Got a few brain cells, for a fed," Dom agreed, then set off, leading the way up the dirt track.

Hobbs gave him a dirty look and deliberately paced beside him; Brian shook his head and fell a couple of steps back, sharing an amused look with Monica. The air of weary strain that had underscored all their interactions when she'd been undercover for the DEA was gone; working with Hobbs had apparently been good for her.

"Not what you expected when you got up for work this morning, was it," he nudged her, flashing her a smile.

Monica grinned back. "Oh, I don't know. Considering we were on our way to visit your _cousin_ , I had a feeling things weren't going to go exactly according to plan."

"And how _did_ you find my cousin Seymour?" Brian snorted. Simmons hadn't exactly gone into detail over the phone-- there'd been the small problem of Barricade tearing up New York to deal with-- but he'd said enough for Brian to guess that Monica and her 'muscle-bound goon' had made an impression.

"He asked me to 'say hi to that fickle cousin' of his the next time I saw him," she replied, wryly.

"Still going off on his 'one man, alone, betrayed by the government he loves' schtick, then," Brian rolled his eyes. "He does know his stuff, but the guy's completely crazy when it comes to the 'bots. To tell the truth, I think that's half the reason NEST let him go; to be a magnet for the conspiracy freaks, and pull in some of the folks who do need help but would never go to the government for it."

"You talk about NEST like you're not a part of it; I thought you were working for them now?" She arched an eyebrow.

"Depends how you define it," he shrugged. "Brian Wells is technically on their payroll-- that's the name I went under in Sector Seven-- but in practice, the team works more like consultants. We have a lot of contacts that wouldn't take well to official oversight, but are pretty damned useful in the hunt for rogue Cybertronians. It's still early days yet, but it's been working for us so far."

Though that might change with NBE-1 back in action. Megatron: the ultimate boogeyman to the human veterans of Sector Seven, not to mention the younger generation of Autobots. There was a reason most of Team Toretto had stayed on Diego Garcia after the news had broken.... and judging by the amount of expletives Ratchet was venting in clear English, never mind the Cybertronian invective he was probably adding over private comm channels, they'd been right to worry. Death hadn't mellowed the Decepticon leader out any.

"Hey, hey, young ears, here," Sam objected weakly from his perch. He was paler than usual, and seemed a little shaken; more like the stressed, confined teenager that Brian first met than the confident young man who'd conquered his problems and reclaimed his life in recent months.

"And as for _you_ , Samuel James Witwicky," the chartreuse robot turned to point at him.

"Oh, God; when I told you to stop calling me Samuel Prime, I didn't mean you should use my _full name_ instead," Sam groaned in reply, cringing back in the cup of Optimus' hand. "You sound like my mom. It's Sam. Just Sam. It's only one syllable; that shouldn't be too hard to remember!"

"You were told to run, and instead rushed back onto the field of battle! You may be the strongest living Avatar of the Allspark, but that won't protect you from Decepticons!"

"Yeah, well, I was pretty sure they wouldn't shoot me. I told you, there's something in my head Megatron wants, which he won't get if he turns me to mush. And it was _Optimus_." He clutched the metal fingers cupped around him more firmly, and the Autobot leader tightened his grip in response. "I couldn't just _leave_ him like that."

"You took a grave risk, Sam," Optimus chided him. "And not only in facing Megatron."

"Yeah, well, it was _my_ risk to take," Sam replied, obstinately.

"Hey," Hobbs spoke up from where he stood between an anxious Bumblebee and an angry Ratchet. "Someone want to tell us what the hell is going on? You're the ones who wanted us here. All Sideswipe said before he took off was that there'd been a fight here, and that those asshole Decepticons with the wings got away again."

A little color came back to Sam's face as his attention was drawn down to the group on the ground. "Uh... Agent Hobbs? I'd just like to say, before anything else..." he began, hesitantly.

"If you're going to apologize, kid, stow it. We don't have time for that shit. _What happened here_?" Hobbs crossed his arms over his chest, glaring up at the group towering over him, visibly unimpressed. The armored figure of Belle walking up behind him, even larger than Bumblebee if not as lethally armed, added weight to his question.

Monica moved forward to stand at his side; Brian waited for Bestia to approach, slightly behind Belle, then patted her thigh in silent question. A slight tingle of energy leaped from his hand to her frame, warning her what he wanted; Belle lowered a careful hand to pick him up, then extended the other for Dom and lifted them up to chest range to put them on more equal footing for the conversation.

Sam swallowed hard before answering. He stared at Belle for a moment, then threw Brian a strange, intent look-- one he wasn't sure how to read-- then sighed and gave his report.

"We were dodging a Decepticon signal on the ground when that 'copter came for us-- Bee's got some damage to his roof, Ratch, make sure he sees you about that later-- and dragged us off to some old industrial building. An electrical station, I think? I was kind of distracted for that part. Then Starscream hit Bee with something to make him kick us out, and Megatron grabbed me and threw me down on this concrete table. I might have cracked some ribs; it kind of hurts when I breathe. But I wasn't paying much attention to that either, because this doc-bot put a probe _up my nose_ and projected a bunch of Allspark symbols right out of my head. You know how fucked up that felt? This oily metal thing wriggling around in my _sinuses_ with Megatron looming over me the whole time, all 'There's something on your mind, boy.'" He deepened his voice, in imitation of the Decepticon leader, and gave a full-body shudder. "They were _this close_ to cutting my head open to get at the rest of it when Optimus dropped through the roof."

"The rest of what?" Ratchet asked, annoyed. "The Allspark does not reside within your physical brain structures; such surgery would have destroyed the very energy that carried the information they sought."

"Tell that to Megatron." Sam shrugged. "He was looking for some kind of energon source hidden on this planet. Long enough ago that even the Allspark memories just had directions, not an exact location." He wrinkled up his nose. "And, just for future reference? Even if you _could_ get the Allspark out of me that way, an alien brain-ectomy would _not_ be on my bucket list."

"I think I speak for all of us when I say, ditto," Mikaela added, dryly.

"Wait. A pre-existing energon source? Not that project you've been working on with Ratchet and Wheeljack?" Brian asked, surprised. He'd just helped them set up an experiment in one of the classified areas of the base, meshing his finer control over the Allspark energies with Sam's greater ability and alien database-enhanced memories.

"Nah, man; I don't think he even knows about that. Which I guess isn't a surprise, considering he's been dead this whole time. But someone definitely told him I had the information he was looking for."

Optimus sighed. "Even if he knew, Megatron would value an immediate payoff over the potential of a gentler solution. It is his nature. During the battle, he asked me if the future of our race was not worth a single human life; I told him he would never stop at one."

"Yeah, right before he _stabbed you through the Spark_ ," Sam shuddered again. "Seriously, never do that again. What if I hadn't been able to fix it? You were _dead_ , Optimus. Finito. Extinguished. I _still_ can't believe that worked." Another tremor shook through his body.

Abruptly, it occurred to Brian what Sam must have done: the same thing all Allspark-touched humans could do, only to an insane degree. He'd laid bare hands on Optimus' frame and channeled all the energy he could into the Autobot. That was why the larger Prime sparkled like he'd never taken damage... and why everyone else was acting so clingy. No wonder the kid was shocky.

He scrounged in his pocket for one of the Snickers bars he carried to ward off his own-- increasingly rare these days, but still an occasional risk-- episodes of low blood sugar, and whistled at the kid.

"Heads up, Sam. Eat the whole thing, and have someone get you some Gatorade or something. You look like you're about to pass out."

Sam fumbled the catch, then stared at the bar in his hands like he'd just seen Mikaela naked and immediately tore at the wrapper with his fingernails. "Thanks, man. Seriously." He gave Brian another intent look, as if promising a longer conversation later, then sank his teeth into the chewy candy.

The Autobots exchanged looks-- transmitting silently again, unless Brian missed his guess-- and then carefully bent to set their passengers on the ground. "I can't promise anything, Sam," Optimus said. "But let us see what may be done to prevent another such encounter. Can you show us the symbols?"

Sam grunted as he finished the candy bar, then stuffed the wrapper in a pocket and wiped his palm on his jeans. "Yeah, sure. Anybody have a knife?"

Hobbs pulled one out of a sheath strapped to the thigh opposite his holster, nearly a foot long if it was an inch, then spun it around in a showy move to hold it out hilt-first. 

"Careful what you touch this time," he snarked, popping an eyebrow at Sam.

Sam flailed, then gave the DSS agent a dirty look and took it from him.

"They come kind of in waves, but the part that repeats looks like this," he said, shaking off his irritation, and started hacking symbols into the packed earth of the road as casually as if doing math on a chalkboard. "Do you recognize it?"

Optimus watched silently until Sam was finished, then vented an imitation sigh. The longer he was around the 'bots, the more Brian noticed how much they anthropomorphized _themselves_ ; he'd thought his NBTs were picking up human-like behaviors from him and his family, but their NBE cousins did it, too. Somehow, it wasn't a surprise to learn their race might have been on Earth longer than previously thought.

"It is a much older form of our language, one now recorded only in the Allspark's memory. No surviving Autobot should be able to read it; only the Seekers have used it within living memory, and they have been missing for many millennia," the Prime said, slowly.

Living memory meant a lot more for sentient robots that counted age in thousands of years, not decades; but there was something about the way he'd said it....

"But _you_ can read it," Dom said shrewdly, picking up on the same thing.

"I have never read it before. But I know these words, as though they were carved into my processor before I was sparked," Optimus replied, thoughtfully. "It is the language of the Primes."

Ratchet made a strange electronic noise, exchanging a glance with Bumblebee. "What does it say?"

"When dawn alights the dagger's tip, three kings will reveal the doorway."

"Well, that was anticlimactic," Sam spoke for all of them. "The doorway to what? The energon source?"

"Is the doorway even on this _planet_?" Mikaela asked, skeptically.

Bumblebee made a querying noise, then played a few measures of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"

"Would those 'Seekers' you mentioned know?" Monica wondered. "Missing could mean hiding. Brian, your cousin said he found _dozens_ of old Cybertronian signatures scattered around the planet, but no one followed up on them. Did he ever talk to you about that?"

"He told me a story about his mother meeting one... but I always thought it was some other Autobot or Decepticon that crash-landed here after Megatron. He never said anything to _me_ about there being more of them... but I guess at this point anything's possible."

"If Megatron's willing to go to such lengths to retrieve this information, when he's been alive again all of a day... there's got to be someone else powerful on the scene, giving orders." Hobbs frowned.

"The Fallen, perhaps," Optimus speculated. "The last words of the Decepticon we encountered in Hong Kong were, 'The Fallen Shall Rise Again'."

"Then I think we'd better be willing to take a few risks ourselves, before shit gets a whole lot worse," Hobbs spoke up again. "Obviously I'm new here, but you can ask O'Connor and Toretto about my history; I've got plenty of experience catching bad guys, by figuring out what they're going to do next and getting out in front of them. And from where I'm standing, unless you're willing to guard every one of your people-- especially Witwicky-- every hour of every day and hope to whatever god you worship that they don't decipher that clue on their own, your best bet is to find the damn thing first and deny it to them."

"Megatron wasn't wrong about one thing," Ratchet added, grimly. "Without energon, our race is slowly dying. The Terrestrial-borns will also have severely limited lifespans without it." He nodded to Belle and Bestia. "Our experiment is producing promising results, but a ready-made source would be a gift from Primus. Whichever side claimed it could win the war by default."

And if the Decepticons won... so much for the natives they called 'insects'. Brian pictured his son's cherubic little face, back on Diego Garcia in Mia's arms, and silently nudged Bestia to put them down.

"What are we waiting for?" he asked, standing shoulder to shoulder with Dom as Bestia transformed back into her Charger shape behind them. "Brooklyn, here we come."

"Looks like I found my excuse to raid that meat locker after all," Hobbs said, sharing a look with Monica.

"Agreed," Optimus decided, transforming back into his Mack truck shape, a shining whirl of metal parts like a work of mobile art done in shades of red, silver and blue. "Autobots, roll out!"

Bumblebee played another sound clip as he followed suit, throwing a door open for Mikaela. " _Number One, assemble the away team!_ "

Belle and Ratchet assumed their vehicular shapes next, reorienting in the direction Ironhide, Sideswipe and the twins had gone, ready to move in Optimus' wake.

Brian slid into Bestia's passenger seat, shaking his head at the spectacle. "I will _never_ get past the urge to laugh when he says shit like that," he murmured, quietly.

"Till all are one," Dom quoted wryly, then reached over to lay a hand on Brian's thigh, expression falling into serious lines. "Bri...."

"Yeah?" Brian raised an eyebrow.

"Just-- I got a feelin'. Watch your ass today. I doubt whatever trick the kid did for Prime would work on a human. Even you, Mr. Magic Hands."

"Me? _You're_ the one who tried to sacrifice himself in Rio."

"How many times you gonna keep bringing that up?"

"Until it sticks," Brian insisted, then leaned in to brush his mouth over Dom's, letting the Allspark energy rise just enough for his partner to feel.

"You _know_ what that shit does to me," Dom grumbled, finally pulling reluctantly away.

"Raincheck?" Brian smirked.

Dom rolled his eyes, then slapped Bestia's dash. "You heard the 'bot. Roll out."

Only dust remained where the Autobots had been; Belle was the only one still waiting, revving his engine impatiently.

Bestia spun her wheels by way of reply, then sped by, flashing her tail lights tauntingly at his grill.


	2. Dom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Contains a few more background references to extended canon from the "Transformers: Sector 7" comic.

"D. Cappucio and Simmons."

The voice carrying through the call over Bestia's speakers was irritable, annoyed, and so familiar in tone that it threw Dom for a moment, trying to figure out what it was reminding him of. Then he caught sight of the smirk on Brian's face.

Ah. So this was _Brian's_ Vince. In the years since his lover had pulled him off a prison bus and spilled the beans about his time with Sector Seven, Brian had never talked much about the family he'd found there, preferring instead to focus on their present. Dom got that, so he'd never pushed for more. But he _had_ wondered. 

"What? No Wells in there? Or even an O'Conner?" Brian replied, the shit-eating grin he wore fully audible in his tone. "Because I could swear I put some money into that little remodeling project you were bitching about a few months back. And from what I hear from my new buddy Hobbs...."

"New buddy Hobbs!" Seymour Simmons' voice was terse, strained, and impatient as he interrupted Brian's attempt to tease, but more bark than bite; yeah, definitely Brian's Vince. Even more so than his friend Roman, whose temper might spark quicker but ran much less sour. "Hah! It's about damn time you called. Because if the kid's handing out access to our intergalactic invaders like popcorn now...."

"C'mon. You know it's not like that. If it was, don't you think I'd have signed the rest of my crew up already?" Brian made a face in Dom's direction, dropping a hand over the fingers he'd left resting on Brian's thigh. "It was an accident; he didn't mean for that to happen."

"Some fucking accident," Simmons scoffed. "I swear, Brian, if it was possible for him to do that all along...."

"Like I said, if it was, do you really think I'd still be the only 'spark in the family?" Brian rolled his eyes. "And even if we'd had some idea it _might_ be possible, I wouldn't have wanted to risk it without doing some testing first. An energy jolt that size is at least as hard on the system as a taser; remember, not everyone in the shock zone made it out of Mission City. And we only got the fallout that day, not the Allspark's undivided attention."

The longer the explanation went, the more it smelled of self-justification; Brian had a bad habit of running off at the mouth when he was worried he'd let someone down. What, did he think Dom might feel the same way-- that he should've made Witwicky zap him the minute they'd realized what had happened to Hobbs? Idiot.

He tightened his grip, half in reassurance and half in warning, and cocked an admonishing eyebrow. Brian knew better; it was _Dom's_ decision to make. As much as he loved his car, and appreciated that it could love him back now, it was a big step from there to having it _in his head_. If and when he was ready for that, he could ask Witwicky himself. If Simmons felt differently, that was his problem, not Brian's.

"Some of us might have been willing take that risk," the former agent groused with a snort. "But I _know_ you didn't call about that. So did you catch the Decepticon that tore up the street in front of the deli, or what?"

Brian threw Dom another glance, mouth quirking in a penitent smile, and answered. "It was Barricade; and no, he ran for reinforcements before we could catch him. I doubt the fight will make the news this time-- for once, the 'Cons settled for tearing up a stretch of forest rather than a city-- but Megatron was there, and Starscream, and a couple other heavy hitters, too. They nearly took down Optimus."

Simmons sucked in a sharp breath. "Megatron? Freaking _NBE One_? I might not've been there to see the kid kill him, but I _did_ see the footage of his carcass being dropped in the ocean, as lifeless as a damn Tinker Toy and twice as ugly. How the _hell_ did he come back from that?"

"You're asking the wrong people," Dom replied, grimly. "The wrong question, too."

"What, do you mean _why_?" Simmons scoffed. "I don't need to ask _that_ , 'cause the answer's obvious already. However he woke back up, the first thing he did was go after the Autobot leader. _Quod erat demonstrandum_. What _I_ wanna know is if this is gonna be a long-term thing. Is he back for good? Do I need to shut the deli? Is that silver 'bot who talked like a walking stereotype coming back then, too?"

Bestia's radio interrupted with an irritated-sounding staticky noise, and Brian cleared his throat. "I wish. And we don't know yet. The first thing Megatron did was actually to go after _Sam_ , not Optimus, looking for a piece of information that used to be stored in the Allspark. It's a good thing Optimus _was_ close enough to intercept, or it sounds like the 'Cons might have got their hands on an advantage big enough to tip the scales of the war. I'd hold off on shutting the deli down at least until we get there, though; the facts we have about what they were looking for are incomplete. We need to take a look at your files."

"Wait, my _files_?" Simmons replied, voice going even stiffer than before. "The whole planet's in danger again, and my _files_ are the thing that actually gets you to call?"

Brian cast his eyes toward Bestia's ceiling with a resigned expression. "Not the 'one man alone' speech again, Seymour; this right here is _exactly_ why...."

"You mean the files I liberated from the recycling bin when S-7 exploded? You mean the records of all the investigations I conducted out of my own personal pocketbook and on my own personal time, because everyone else in the organization, _you included_ Brian, kept telling me it was a waste of my time?" Simmons spoke over him, tone a curious mixture of fury and glee. " _Those_ files are now vital to a situation that potentially threatens the fate of our planet?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. _Those_ files," Brian said, irritably. "C'mon. I told you, I was undercover with the FBI at the time, _trying_ to keep my contact convinced all the stuff I was passing him had to do with Japanese robots. I wasn't about to try to sell _aliens_ to a man with the power to ruin my life-- not to mention the lives of all my friends-- if I gave him any information he didn't want to believe. I couldn't afford to spend any time on a wild goose chase that obvious."

Dom squeezed his thigh again; he knew exactly what 'the lives of my friends' meant. That FBI agent had a lot to answer for. Even if he _was_ the reason Brian had come into Dom's life in the first place.

"A likely story," Simmons sniffed, then relented. "What exactly are you looking for?"

Brian exchanged another glance with Dom, eyes sparking bluer than usual in the sunlight streaming through Bestia's windows. "Optimus mentioned ancient Cybertronians called Seekers-- possibly so named because they were looking for the same thing Megatron and his faction are after. Whatever it is, the directions were only stored in the Allspark, and were written in a language those Seekers speak. We were hoping somewhere in those files you had enough clues to find one and ask it some questions."

"And what, you're just gonna trust the answers?" Simmons sounded deeply skeptical. "The one my mom met was more against the other guy than for her, if you get my drift. It only helped her because of some kind of quid pro quo thing with my dad. Tracking them down's one thing; if you go trying to make friends, you're asking for trouble. These things aren't like the Autobots you know, if they even _are_ Autobots at all."

"Well, that's our lookout, isn't it? Besides, we've got Optimus and his team with us," Brian insisted.

"Hmph. Well, then I guess it's your lucky day, because wouldn't you know it, right after your good friend Hobbs brought _your_ problems to _my_ neighborhood, I caught a little scrap drone trying to sneak into my meat locker."

"A Decepticon?" Dom asked, frowning. 

"More of a wannabe, if you ask me," Simmons sniffed. "'Bout the size of that one that tried to carve the kid up a couple years ago, but a little less Terminator and a little more toy-grade RC. Anyway, it calls itself Wheelie, and we had ourselves a nice little _chat_." 

"...And?" Brian prompted his cousin further, wincing at the acrid bite in his voice.

"And I showed him those pictures I have of Cybertronian symbols all over the globe, and the readings I found that everyone swore were infinitesimal, not worth investigating. He put them all together and plotted me a map." Irritation shifted to smug satisfaction in Simmons' tone. "All I had to do was tell him he could switch sides, and he spilled the beans like _that_. Puts a little perspective on this war of theirs, doesn't it, if it's been going on long enough the little ones don't even have the _concept_ of defection."

Brian exchanged another troubled glance with Dom. "So if I asked you to tell me where to go....?"

"If you're still anywhere on the mid-East Coast? The National Air and Space Museum, I think; the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. It might not be the closest, closest, but it's the strongest reading of the bunch, and the easiest to get into."

Dom didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but Brian seemed to. "The new annex out at Dulles? Where they keep the pieces too large to display at the main building on the National Mall?"

"That's the one!" Simmons enthused. "Now, don't thank me all at once; certainly not with a meeting with the kid or anything...."

"I'm sure we'll stop by after it's all over," Brian half-promised, then made a throat-cutting gesture. "Thanks again, Seymour."

Bestia took her cue and ended the call, but Brian held up a hand as Dom opened his mouth to speak.

"You get that, guys?" he said, shooting Dom an apologetic look.

His Customs friend's voice carried back, bright with amusement. "And Luke was _so_ looking forward to digging through that meat locker."

"Speak for yourself," Hobbs snorted. "The quicker we get there the better, with alien terrorists running around thinking they've offed the Prime. You trust his intel, O'Conner?"

"He may have a few screws loose, but when it comes to Decepticons? Yeah. He doesn't want Megatron running around loose any more than we do. Optimus? Sam?" Brian replied. "What do you guys think?"

The kid's voice carried through with a sigh. "Yeah, I'll talk to him. Might be a good idea to see if it's repeatable anyway-- Lennox has had some problems with the international guys with NEST, thinking we don't trust 'em with certain jobs when it's just that they weren't at Mission City and don't have the Allspark touch. And in the meantime...."

The Autobot's leader spoke up then, his voice deep and stern. "We have a new destination. Autobots? Change route to Washington DC."

The rest chimed in with affirmatives... and then Brian tapped the dash again.

"Comms cut," Bestia replied, the radio dial spinning down without the touch of human intervention. Then she added more petulantly, "Well, the big boys can't say we haven't done our part after _this_."

For a car, she really came off as a teenager sometimes; Dom had never been kidding when he'd referred to the NBTs as Brian's mechanical children. They and some of their more trigger-happy NBE cousins had been having an on-an-off squabble ever since the team had arrived on Diego Garcia, regarding who'd scored what points in the on-going skirmishes against the Decepticons. Dom was pretty sure it was more the homegrown bots' youth leading to the hazing than anything else; unfortunately, the only kind of fix for that was time and experience. At least it might give Bestia something to bond with Belle over, if they ever got past the current pigtail-pulling phase; he doubted Hobbs' big LAPV would take that kind of condescending attitude sitting still.

At the moment, though, Dom was more concerned by the worried lines in Brian's face, and the feeling of idling at the top of a mountain, with a long, sharply curving route to go before they reached the bottom. Whatever scheme Megatron had in mind, it was clear they were still in the first act, and he couldn't shake the feeling that there would be worse to go before it got better.

"Brian," he began again, not even really sure what he wanted to say. Spooking at shadows wasn't their style. "...His mama really named him Seymour?"

Brian huffed a laugh, the bright flash of his smile breaking back through the worry. "Yeah, yeah she did. No family excuse for it, either. Her name's Anna; his dad was a William, called Bill; and _his_ mom was a Margaret, though she went by Margo. And _her_ dad was Walter, the founder of Sector Seven."

"Walter Simmons-- it was his wife's second husband _you're_ descended from, right?" Dom prompted him, remembering the family tree Brian had sketched out for him and Mia. "The other founder, the one who retired to marry her when the first guy got all obsessed with the Ice Man?"

"Yeah. Theodore Wells. I guess he and Walter were pretty close in the beginning; I've seen a few of Old Man Simmons' journals that Seymour inherited, and he's mentioned several times in the early going." Brian made a wry face at that, like he wasn't sure he should say anything else, and Dom raised an eyebrow at him.

"That bad? Or that familiar?" Dom wouldn't be surprised by either; half the reason Brian had fallen into the Toretto orbit in the first place back when he'd been a rookie detective had been his deep and abiding hunger for family. It had been weird enough for Dom to hear stories of the grandfather who'd pro-raced in Italy back when his parents had been around to give them life; how much harder had it been for Brian, reading about his own famous ancestor in his equally long-dead rival's journals?

"You tell me," Brian said ruefully, then shifted tone as if he was quoting something. " _Why do we pursue lives fraught with lies and danger? I believe, though I would never tell him this, that Theo does it for the mere visceral thrill. He looks out upon the world and finds it lacking; there is a hole in his soul and Theo seeks to fill that hole with adventure._ "

Dom knew exactly what Brian was trying to say; more of the same self-sabotaging bullshit that had made him a buster years ago when they first met and still did sometimes today. It was true that their days of living life by the quarter mile, of trying to outrace their problems ten seconds at a time and giving no kind of a shit about the consequences, weren't all that far behind them. They'd done it mostly at separate times and for separate reasons, but it had more or less come from the same place. Brian was pointing out the resemblance like it was a bad thing, though; like he hadn't just reminded Dom what had come after that, as well.

"Yeah, I see it. The agent thing, the cop thing," he said slowly, letting his eyes trace over the lean lines of Brian's form. Then he shifted the script, continuing in admiring tones. "Why you left it all behind in the end, too. They say sometimes genes skip a generation; that must've been what happened with your father."

Brian gave Dom a startled, confused look. "What do you mean?"

Dom let the corner of his mouth curl up and shifted his hand a little further up Brian's thigh, voice deepening with intent. "He decided family was more important than the job. I wonder who that might remind me of."

Brian swallowed, a flush creeping up the line of his throat. Then his expression softened, and he leaned across the gap between the seats. 

There were decided benefits to the whole cars driving themselves thing, Dom decided.

...Or could have been, if they weren't essentially riding inside their own kid. He pulled back with a grimace a moment later, then gestured toward the dash. "Raincheck," he reminded Brian. "Little pitchers."

Even in the midst of a robot civil war, family was still the most important thing in their universe.

He thought that was a legacy Theodore Wells would have approved of; definitely his own father, even if the grandchild in question was a little on the motorized side. It wasn't as though the Torettos didn't practically have oil for blood anyway; what were a few gears more or less to the heart?

...Or the mind. All right, all right; when he had the chance, he _would_ ask Witwicky about it. It was a part of Brian, and Jesse, and all the girls; and they were what was important here, not Dom's wariness of the alien power. Besides. What if it extended their lifespan, like it did with the NBEs? Like hell he'd make them go on without him when another option was available.

Just so long as it never tore them apart, like it had Optimus and Megatron. It wasn't so hard to read behind the lines and see that there'd been something else between the bitter enemies a long time ago; hatred that intense didn't grow from ignorance or apathy, and in many ways Cybertronians were unsettlingly similar to human beings.

"Shit. Sorry, Bestia," Brian apologized, patting the dash again.

"Why? I've had that talk too, you know," Bestia replied, puzzled. "You didn't even get to the part with the sticky fluids on the seats. Though I'd appreciate it if you didn't; that doesn't sound very pleasant for the upholstery!"

The look on Brian's face at that was something to see; like he'd taken a bucket of ice water to the face, a preview of what it would be like in a dozen years or so when it was Jesse's turn to go through puberty.

Dom laughed in warm amusement, letting Brian's splutters of parental indignation and Bestia's impertinent responses wash over him, and settled back to enjoy the rest of the ride.


	3. Mikaela

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> None of the information presented in the movies about the Transformers' origins really makes sense if you try to connect it all together, especially since Age of Extinction came out, and the previews for Last Knight don't look much cheerier on that front. So I cherry-picked some background facts from the [TF Wiki's Movie Timeline](http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Movie_timeline) and made them fit with my adaptation of the universe to smooth out the plot. (Seriously, how did the Allspark end up with clues to the location of the Matrix-- and how did Jetfire know about them? Even the timeline doesn't try to explain that.) 
> 
> There should be one more chapter to this bit, and then maybe an epilogue; afterward, I'll move the chapter notes to an endnote so they don't interrupt the flow. :)

Mikaela spent most of the two hour drive from Random Forest, Delaware to Washington, DC white-knuckling the edge of her seat and trying not to worry. It had been a long time since she'd seen Sam that pale and stressed, probably not since the _last_ time they'd been targeted by Megatron. Her boyfriend tended to run off at the mouth even when he was frustrated or under pressure; maybe _especially_ when he was frustrated and under pressure. It took a lot to make him actually show how upset he was, and something about their encounter with the resurrected Decepticon had shaken him badly.

She hadn't been close enough to see the details of what went down after the Autobots arrived-- Bumblebee had scooped her up while Optimus tried to cover Sam's escape-- and by the time the others had driven the Decepticons away it had pretty much all been over. But she believed Sam when he said Optimus had been killed, and that he'd somehow used the Allspark energy to bring him back. Between that and what had happened with Agent Hobbs, the whole 'Samuel Prime' thing had to be bothering him worse than usual... and neither she nor Bee were there to talk it out with him. Optimus was great and all, but he was a millennia-old robot who'd been a leader longer than Western civilization had even existed; could he really understand why an eighteen-year-old human might balk at the idea of having this immense legacy already laid out for him?

As much as it bothered her, though, Mikaela did get why Optimus might want to talk to him alone... and for all that they were still teenagers, she and Sam had never really had the luxury of being able to wrap their whole worlds up in each other. She would just have to have faith that they'd get through these new developments the way they had everything else so far. And in the meantime, they _did_ have a more urgent situation on their hands.

"Exactly how long do you think this Seeker's been on Earth?" she wondered aloud, a frown developing as she thought about everything the Autobots had said about energon, the Allspark, and what could happen to a Cybertronian deprived of sufficient energy long-term.

Sharing with Sam and Mikaela for the last couple of years had done for Bumblebee's vocal circuits what Ratchet's skill alone had been unable to manage; he could speak now when he wanted, though he still tended to default to soundbytes as a first response out of long habit. "A long, long time ago," Don McLean's voice crooned from the speakers, "I can still remember how that music used to make me smile…."

The music cut out, and Bee made a throat-clearing sound before continuing. "Long enough that they've only been spoken of as legends since I was sparked; like Primus, or the Dynasty of Primes. I've never met one, or even _heard_ of any mech who's met one."

Mikaela had heard the Autobots mention Primus before; they swore by him like humans would Jesus, with about the same debate over whether or not he'd ever really existed, and if so, if he'd really been the incarnation of their Creator. But the reference to the Dynasty of Primes was new. "You mean there used to be more Primes than just Optimus? What happened to them?"

"The legends say the Dynasty were the first Cybertronians that Primus made using the Allspark," Bee replied, pensively. "They didn't transform, but they had powers beyond any mech today. After many vorns of building and exploring Cybertron alone, they went back to the Allspark to make newer, more specialized mechs to help care for what they'd made. Seekers were supposed to have been some of their earliest creations. But there've been so many wars since they vanished, almost all of the generations before Optimus and Megatron's have been lost. Sentinel Prime, Optimus' mentor, might have been old enough to know more, but he was killed before we left Cybertron."

Given how long the average 'bot was capable of living, the thought of entire generations having been wiped out was kind of horrifying. No wonder Optimus was so obsessed with the idea of peace… and no wonder Megatron cared so little about individual lives. Two very different lessons learned from the same major trauma.

"So a really, _really_ long time, then," she mused. "Whoever we find's likely to need a lot of help just to wake up, and Sam's already worn himself out healing Optimus-- better warn the others."

"Roger, roger," Bumblebee replied, in the voice of one of those Star Wars battlebots.

Mikaela rolled her eyes, giving the dash a rueful smile. He was trying to cheer her up; pity she wasn't in the mood for it to work. But the conversation _had_ reminded her of something she could do to keep busy for the rest of the drive. She took a deep breath, then closed her eyes to meditate on her focusing her Allspark energy. She wasn't as skilled as Brian with it-- _no one_ was as skilled as Brian, though Sam was getting there-- but she had a feeling every little bit was going to count.

* * *

One good thing about the whole mess with Agent Hobbs: having a couple of DSS agents along made searching the museum a whole lot easier. They didn't have to wait until business hours were over, or risk sending up a NEST flag if any bystanders recognized the rest of the team. Because it turned out that while they'd been traveling, the Decepticons had taken over all the TV and radio channels, demanding that the 'human authorities' surrender Sam Witwicky and Brian O'Conner; someone must have finally filled Megatron in on what had happened while he'd been rusting at the bottom of the ocean. 

That meant they were in even more danger than they'd been in before... but it also meant that Optimus was probably right, and Megatron still thought he was dead. So if they could keep out of sight, and get Ironhide and his partners to uphold the charade with the NEST leadership, they might have a little breathing room.

Before she knew it, the Smithsonian complex had been temporarily evacuated, and Hobbs had used his authority to have the security cameras deactivated so the rest of them could sneak inside. Mikaela linked her arm through Sam's as they split up in small groups to search the main buildings, and spent a long moment gazing up at the Space Shuttle Discovery before moving on to likelier frames in the Boeing Aviation Hanger. 

"Can you imagine?" she said, shaking her head. "The youngest official astronaut was a woman-- but she was thirty two years old, and she had a PhD. Even if I'd had the grades, I'd never have been able to afford that kind of college. But every day, we ride around in an alien born halfway across the universe. Weird, huh?"

"Kinda puts things in perspective, doesn't it?" Sam murmured, then gave her a wry smile and squeezed her hand. "Sorry I've been keeping my distance today. Every so often all the craziness just gets to me, you know? And this thing with Megatron definitely isn't helping. But I wouldn't take the last couple of years back for anything." 

She knew; it was kind of hard to keep feelings a secret with their Allspark fields tangling between them along with their fingers. But it was still good to hear. "Apology accepted," she replied, then caught her breath as something tugged at her senses from deeper in the building. "Hey, do you feel…?"

Sam's expression went grim, and he nodded, turning to look deeper in the hanger. "Yeah, I feel it... Brian?" He raised his voice. "Do you think maybe that...?"

"Yeah, it's the Blackbird!" Brian called back before he could finish the sentence, somewhere ahead of them.

They picked up the pace, weaving between the exhibits-- then stopped at the sight of a long, fenced-off dark shape with a profile that looked sharp enough to cut. The famous stealth plane was kind of set off by itself in the middle of a big smooth patch of concrete floor; probably so they could host rich-people dinner parties in full sight of the exotic aircraft. It made it easy for their group to gather back up, congregating at the informational plaque to stare in dismay at one of the most advanced pieces of human technology ever made.

Or-- _inhuman_ , Mikaela realized with a thrill, wondering exactly when the Seeker had scanned one of the planes as an altform. She ducked under the railing and took several cautious steps closer to the plane's nose, then held her hand up just shy of contact, feeling its energy tickle her fingertips. "Wow."

Another voice raised behind her, followed by a set of sneakers hopping over the railing to squeak over the concrete behind her. "No, stay here, Sam-- better not risk it. Keep an eye on him, Dom?"

"Remind me to shake hands with him before the next time; I'd rather be watching _your_ back, Bri," a low, gravelly voice responded. But Dom didn't demur. And then Brian was there, holding a hand up next to hers.

The former Sector Seven agent and his family had become like uncles and aunts to her and Sam over the last several months; Mikaela had got used to seeing Brian work with Sam and the soldiers, and working with Brian herself on his experiments with Ratchet. But there was something a little spooky about him when his eyes lit up with that blue glow, and he always seemed to get more out of it than the rest of them did.

"You were right," he said after a long moment, frowning in concentration. "He's in pretty bad shape; I'm surprised he was even aware long enough to see an SR-71 in action. Hobbs? I think we're gonna need you on this, too."

" _That_ thing's an alien?" the big DSS agent replied, arching a skeptical eyebrow as he stepped over the rail, leaving Fuentes with Sam and Dom. "You've got to be kidding me. And I thought the mess we made in Rio left a black mark on my record. I don't even want to know what the museum director's going to say to my boss when this thing vanishes under my supervision."

"Quit complaining and get your ass over here," Brian replied, unsympathetically. "I don't even want to know how much damage rust in the processors does to a mech's memory; the more energy we can feed him, the better this is gonna go."

"Seriously?" Hobbs groused. "I literally _just_ got turned into a whatever-the-hell-it-is you all are. How do you expect _me_ to help?"

"A little laying on of hands, a little prayer…." Brian shrugged, grinning obnoxiously. "Seriously, though, if you know any meditation or anything like that, just put your hand right there between Mikaela's and mine, and we'll take care of all the rest of it."

Hobbs still looked dubious, not that Mikaela really blamed him; he'd been shanghaied into this mess as abruptly as she had been two years ago, and so far had even less incentive to stick around. "C'mon," she added her two cents. "What can it hurt to try?"

"I'll be reminding you of those words later." He gave her a long, assessing look, then glanced back at his girlfriend. "I guess if I'm gonna blow up the bridge anyway…."

"Might as well use all the C4," Fuentes replied with a wry grin.

Mikaela wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but she could guess, and it seemed to do the trick; she made a space between her and Brian as Hobbs stepped up and reached a hand out to the plane's nose. Just before he made contact, Mikaela laid her hand over the back of his, and Brian put his over them both. Then, all together, their skin touched the plane; she felt Brian's intense, orderly aura rise, and the gentle tug on the edges of her own spirit abruptly became a sharp, painful _yank_.

"Hey!" she gasped.

It was as though the sleeping Cybertronian in front of them had stuck a straw straight into her soul. Fortunately, she barely had time to register Hobbs' own energy wavering against the edges of hers before Brian disengaged with a shout and pulled them away, leaving her dizzy and reeling. "Enough! That's enough!"

Mikaela blinked, staggering backward several steps as the entire plane lit up with a burst of erratic energy. A flash of blue limned the cockpit and the edges of the wings-- and then ages-old transformation circuits engaged, and it began to shift in gradual, grinding stages.

" _Was_ it enough?" she asked, panting as Sam rushed to her and slid a supporting arm around her waist. "We barely touched it!"

"It'll have to be," Brian replied grimly, looking gray around the edges as he helped Hobbs stagger away.

And maybe it was; the mech transformed like an old man cracking his back in an attempt to stand up straight, but when it was done, he was even bigger and bristlier than Optimus. Mikaela watched tensely as red eyes blinked open and the Seeker turned its head to take in its surroundings; he looked a little on the scary side, but if he predated the war, that might not mean anything. 

"Hello?" she called up to him.

The Seeker refocused his attention down at ground level, facial features drawing together in a metallic frown. "Hello? What sort of greeting is that? And what sort of hideous mausoleum is _this_?" He waved a hand at the other exhibits.

Had he gone to sleep before the Internet existed? Mikaela gaped, unsure how to go about explaining the concept of a museum to an alien who didn't already have endless illustrations at his fingertips.

"We offer greetings in the name of Optimus Prime and the Autobots," Brian replied for her, holding up his hands and stepping between her and the strange mech. His partner didn't try to stop him, but Mikaela could see in Dom's expression that he wished he could; as grateful as she was for the intervention, she definitely understood _that_ feeling. "What is your designation?"

" _My_ designation?" the Seeker echoed again. "What about yours? Since when is the habit of a Prime to let a fleshling speak for him?"

Clearly Sam's self-preservation instincts were still on the fritz, because he chose that moment to chime in. "I don't know how long it's been since you got any news, but it's the habit of the _current_ Primes to call the people of this planet _allies_ ," he said, stepping forward too. "He's Brian O'Conner; and _my_ designation's Sam Witwicky. Or as Optimus calls me, _Samuel Prime_."

The irritable Blackbird stared at them, narrowing his optics as he glanced over the whole group, then he made a disbelieving noise. "A fleshling Prime? Ptah. Behold the eternal glory of Jetfire!" He reached up, extending his arms as if to strike a dramatic pose-- and just barely missed clobbering one of the other exhibits.

Hobbs took that as his cue to glance toward the hangar doors and detach some kind of control from his belt. "How about we move the rest of this meet and greet outside-- the museum's going to be angry enough as it is."

"I don't see why, when _I'm_ the one who's been stuck on this planet for hundreds of vorns, looking for something I have no desire to actually find!" Jetfire did turn toward the sunlight as it began to flood in though, shaking his legs out like a human who'd been sitting in one place too long. "The Fallen can go rust!"

Sam shared an astonished glance with Mikaela, then began hurrying after the big 'bot as it started picking its way between the other exhibits.

"The Fallen?" he called as they ran. "You worked for the Fallen? Who's the Fallen?"

"You don't know? Is that civil war finally over, then?" Jetfire asked incredulously, stopping outside to give him a curious look.

"Uh… no?" Sam replied. "Why?"

"Then perhaps this is no Decepticon ploy, because he was the first," Jetfire scoffed, turning away again. "The original Decepticon, who turned on his brother Primes in the name of expediency. It was no wonder they hid the key from him with the last ebb of their sparks, even if the end of the harvesters meant the end of my kind's purpose as well. Such a demotion, to spend eternity hunting a mere _tomb_ rather than Seeking new, barren suns to replenish the Allspark's energy." He made another disgruntled noise. 

"Though clearly," he added thoughtfully, locking optics on Sam again. "Some other method has been found in our absence. What happened to put the source of our race in the hands of fragile, spinal-cord based organisms? You say another Prime has come here? What is his aim?"

Optimus, Bumblebee, Ratchet, and the two Earthborn had all tucked themselves out of sight in the furthest parking lot when they'd arrived, but that was no distance at all to a Cybertronian. Optimus joined the conversation then, transforming on the other side of Jetfire. "My aim is the preservation of our race; and of the humans, who have been caught in the crossfire of our endless war. The Decepticons seek whatever lies buried on this planet; I fear that if we do not reach it first, all will be lost."

The others transformed behind him; Jetfire looked them over, gaze lingering on Bestia and Hobbs' Belle. "You're not wrong; the last harvester is buried on this world, and the Fallen knows where it is. The Allspark only created one key to activate them, the Matrix of Leadership, and when the Fallen's brothers discovered there was life on this world they attempted to deny it to him. They knew it would mean the waning of the Allspark to save the native species, but they could not bring themselves to kill him instead and begin anew. So they sacrificed themselves to hide the Matrix. But in the last few decavorns, clues to its location began to appear around the planet, carved in the language of the Primes. I did not understand until now, but I see sparklings with you, too young to have ever set foot on our homeworld, and I can feel the energy in these fleshlings as well. Why did you bring the Allspark here, of all planets?"

His tone wasn't exactly accusatory, but it did demand an answer. Optimus bristled at the tone and took a step closer, one massive metal finger pointing at Jetfire's chestplates. "Because anywhere was better than Cybertron, where the Decepticons would have used it to destroy all factions other than their own. We could not have known the Matrix was here as well; if Megatron knew, the Fallen must have told him. But when he confronted us today, he said he was searching for an energon source. Why would he seek such a thing if it would destroy this world only to fuel the Allspark, and he already knows the Cube is no more?"

"Wait, better question," Sam's eyes widened. "The Allspark's spread between a bunch of human hosts now-- which makes a lot more sense actually, if it's using _us_ as batteries so it doesn't have to eat _suns_ anymore. Will that affect how the machine works? Maybe it won't even turn on at all."

"You're asking _me_?" Jetfire gave a rusty snort. "Even if I believe you're telling the truth, and not trying to pull some kind of trick-- _I'm_ not the Prime here. I'm just a messenger."

"Things ain't ever that simple, kid," Hobbs interjected, shaking his head. "Optimus? You said you recognized the symbols; and it sounds like you've heard of this Matrix before. Anything else you can share?"

The big red and blue 'bot shook his head grimly. "I know of it only by name, and that it was an artefact of the Primes. Perhaps Sentinel thought I would not need to know more; perhaps even he did not know."

"Great. Just great," Dom commented, resting a hand on Brian's shoulder. Behind them, Bestia loomed, uncharacteristically quiet; Belle was a scowling presence beside her, their animosity temporarily set aside. "Well, at least we know what the stakes are now. Anything else _you_ can tell us, oldtimer?"

Jetfire tilted his head downward. "Only that even if the harvester does have a failsafe-- the Matrix possesses an energy like no other. If the Fallen is back and searching for it himself, we will only be safe when it beyond his grasp. A Prime may have a chance at defeating him," he tilted his head to Optimus, "but not if he controls its power. He despises organic lifeforms, and will not hesitate to kill or enslave you all and rip the Allspark from your bodies."

"Yeah, got the preview of that one already, thanks," Sam shuddered. "Okay then, what next? Where do the clues lead?"

"To the same desert where the harvester is buried, I believe," Jetfire replied. "If the Allspark provided the clues for _your_ people, then you should be able to find it from there."

"But which desert?" Fuentes frowned. "If it's hundreds or even thousands of miles away, then we'll have to--"

"Stand still, of course!" Jetfire interrupted, tone rising in realization. "Right-- should have thought of that first!"

"Thought of what?" Sam blurted. " _Wait_ \--"

Alarm washed through Mikaela as a sudden wave of energy rose in Jetfire's frame. Then a crackling pain ripped through through her like a flashback of Mission City, tearing her hand away from her boyfriend's--

followed by hot air hitting her like a blow, sending her sprawling, gasping for air--

only to choke on grains of gritty sand.

She stared at the unfamiliar ground for a long moment in disbelief, then flipped over, coughing up at a vault of twilit blue sky. Had the old 'bot just teleported? Damn this day anyway!

Mikaela cleared her throat, then climbed shakily to her feet and took a deep breath. "SAM!"


	4. Sam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Way too much research went into this, ugh. Also, while it parallels the movie pretty strongly out of necessity, I avoided direct quotes as hard as I could. Hopefully I made it interesting! Last part up very soon.

It was absolutely the stupidest thing he could be worrying about, in the midst of being shanghaied by an ancient used-to-be-Decepticon while the current Decepticons slaughtered thousands world-wide, but Sam was absolutely convinced that someone was _watching him_. Someone invisible and powerful and oddly enough-- _not_ the Allspark.

He'd got used to the way the Cube's energy felt over the last couple of years: an energetic and purposeful kind of presence, curling warmly in the back of his mind, almost eager to shove information his way. Whatever loomed at the edges of his awareness now felt more-- _judgy_ somehow, vast and alien and a lot less impressed with his existence. He doubted it was Jetfire, either, and definitely not any of the Autobots; the first moment he really remembered feeling it was back in the woods of Delaware, watching Optimus crash to the ground like a Kong-sized Humpty Dumpty knocked off his wall. He'd put the creepy feeling down to the rush of terror and fury that had crashed through him at the time, watching the light flicker out of the big Prime's optics as he begged Sam to run-- and afterward, to the exhaustion and desperation of running right back into the fray, slapping his hands over Optimus' shattered chest and channeling every erg of Allspark energy he could muster.

It hadn't gone away, though, when Optimus had shuddered miraculously back to life under his hands; nor when Brian and his team had shown up with a candy bar and ideas about what to do next. Nor on the drive to DC; nor when they found the Seeker in the Smithsonian of all the ironic places; nor when he had to stand by and watch while his girlfriend helped tickle the old stealth plane awake. It was just _there_ , kind of like the sense of impending disaster he'd used to get as a kid, sneaking back home a minute after curfew knowing the odds were pretty good his dad was already lying in wait.

He didn't think anyone else was feeling the same thing, though whatever it was was definitely aware of _them_. Brian, in particular; the intangible sense of eyes on his back had shifted strangely when the ex-cop and his people arrived, echoing off the older man's Allspark field somehow in a way Sam couldn't quite articulate. None of the Allspark stuff translated well, really, but the almost psychic way the energy interacted with what the crazy scientist types called 'other dimensions of reality' were especially impossible to describe. He'd just as soon not deal with any of it if he could-- but as he'd long since passed Go and collected his $200, it would be really stupid of him to try to deny the cost as it came due.

He coughed on the harsh, dry air of wherever Jetfire had brought them, then sat up slowly, trying to place the sound of his girlfriend calling for him over the painful ringing in his ears. Whatever was watching him had shifted _again_ , like a needle poking at the middle of his brain; he seriously hoped it wasn't the Fallen guy everyone was so worried about. It seemed like that might be the kind of thing an ancient Prime could do.

"Mikaela? Bee?" he yelled back, squinting around at the bronze and brown palette of a rocky, twilit desert. It kind of, sort of, looked like the arid landscape near Vegas, but not really-- and it had to be several hours east of DC, not west, given the obvious shift in time zones. The Middle East, maybe? Somewhere like Jordan or Egypt?

"Sam!" Mikaela called again in recognition, followed by the sound of running feet.

Sam climbed to his feet and braced for a tackling hug, holding on tight for a moment to just enjoy the fact that they were both still together and more or less OK. It had been one hell of a day already. Then he stiffened at the sight of a Cybertronian looming against the sky, for half a second convinced that they'd been found by a Decepticon-- before recognizing Jetfire's weird-ass metallic beard under the red glow of the figure's optics.

Right, then. First things first. Sam titled his head back and yelled up toward the Seeker. "Hey, asshole! Didn't you hear me say _wait_? Or does that mean something other than 'hey, let's pause and think about this a minute' in the Seeker dictionary?"

Jetfire gave him a distinctly unimpressed look, for all the world like a disappointed grandparent. Apparently, even back in pre-civilized-humanity days, Cybertronians had emoted like organic people; if it hadn't come with a side-order of impending disaster, the idea of getting a look at one of the original Primes for comparison would have really intrigued him. "What was there to think about any further? The next step was obvious."

"Obvious? Obvious?" Sam flailed. "Well forgive me being _human_ , but we don't think at Cybertronian processor speeds, so how about you fill me on what exactly was so _obvious_ about suddenly teleporting us to-- where the hell is this, anyway?"

"I told you to _stand still_ , a clear indicator that I was about to open a space bridge! How else did you expect us to travel to Egypt?" Jetfire replied indignantly as everyone else began following the sound of their arguing to regroup. "And don't tell me you don't know what _that_ is; I detected the distinct signature of space bridge technology on this planet's moon fifty years ago, greater than could be accounted for by the presence of another Seeker. Is that not how the Autobots arrived?"

"On our _moon_?" Sam gaped again, thrown by the reference. Fifty years ago was, what... 1961 or so? Right before the Blackbird had gone into production, according to the plaque he'd read at the museum... and also, right before the Apollo moon missions as well. "No, they came in a spaceship. Spaceships, actually," he added, remembering the _Xanthium_. "What's a space bridge?"

"A technology that had been lost millennia ago, one of the abilities of the Ancients," Optimus said, optics glowing like a pair of blue stars against the darkening sky as he approached. "Sentinel Prime recreated it near the end of the war, by means of a network of pillars to allow swift transport of soldiers, supplies and refugees-- but his ship, the _Ark_ , was attacked by Starscream before he could deploy it and the wreckage lost to space. You say it is now _here_ , on the satellite of _this world_?"

Dom made a noise of disbelief. "Now what are the odds of _that_?"

"I know where I'd put _my_ money," Brian commented, eyes nearly as bright as Optimus' as he looked up at the big Prime. "Everyone just took Megatron at his word that he was originally here looking for the Allspark, but what if he was actually coming for the Matrix on the Fallen's behalf and just happened to spot the Allspark's signal as he approached? What if the Matrix is _why_ the Allspark ended up on Earth in the first place? And now the _Ark _... it always seemed weird to me that our people would be so compatible, given our differences, but it's starting to look like there's a lot more going on here."__

Hobbs sighed gustily. "C'mon guys, _focus_. I'm sure that's all very interesting, and one of you will explain why it's such a big deal later on-- but it's not what we're doing right here, _right now_ , in literal Bumfuck, Egypt. What were those clues again, son?"

There was only one human in the world that had the right to call Sam 'son'—but Hobbs was right, this wasn't the time to argue. Sam took a deep breath, then squeezed Mikaela's hand and repeated the phrase Optimus had translated for him back in Delaware. "When dawn alights the dagger's tip, three kings will reveal the doorway."

"The dagger's tip has to be some prominent geographical feature," Hobbs crossed his arms over his massively muscular chest, then glanced over to the transformed Gurkha. "I don't know about anyone else, but I don't recognize that term-- google it would you, Belle? The three kings, though...."

Mikaela's hand clenched suddenly in Sam's. "Three kings... I probably wouldn't have thought about it if we weren't in Egypt, but... weren't the pyramids of Giza supposedly laid out to reflect the stars of Orion's belt? And those stars are sometimes called the 'three kings'? I remember it from all the astronomy stuff we went through when we were trying to figure out where Cybertron is from here. You remember, 'every winter Orion hunts in the sky, but every summer he flees as the constellation of the scorpion comes'."

"Right, and our best guess is, Cybertron's location's near one of the stars in Scorpius' tail," Sam remembered. "So, what... you think if we go wherever 'the dagger's tip' is, the stars of Orion's belt will point what direction we're supposed to start searching? Or the pyramids... but no, they weren't built yet when the Matrix was buried, and they probably weren't there when the Allspark crashed here, either. Gotta be the stars."

"At what time of year, though?" Fuentes frowned. "It would only be visible on the horizon at dawn for a very brief period. Are we talking some kind of prophecy, or does it refer to the season when it was buried?"

"If alien robots could see the future, I think we'd have a whole 'nother set of problems to be worrying about," Dom replied, very dryly. "Anyone know what the constellations look like from Egypt this time of year?"

Sam thought about that for a long moment, frowning as he mentally prodded at the Allspark energy. A cloud of glowing symbols responded, scrolling before his mind's eye... projecting results that correlated pretty strongly with the direction the sensation of _watching_ was strongest from. Somehow, he wasn't surprised. 

"Um... I think it _would_ be visible at dawn? Maybe? Somewhere off in... that direction?" he pointed.

"You can tell that, when you don't even know where _we_ are?" Hobbs popped an eyebrow at him.

Sam grimaced, then hesitantly offered further, "I think I can sorta... feel it from here?"

Primus; what if it _was_ the Matrix he was feeling, resonating off that sliver of Allspark metal still buried in his shoulder? That was the only thing different about him, really, than any of the others, regardless of all the 'Samuel Prime' nonsense. If the Allspark had somehow been causing those clues to be left, then it didn't seem beyond the stretch of the imagination that the reverse could also be true: the key looking back to its creator. 

...Assuming _it_ was sentient, too. Which they wouldn't know until they found it. A shiver worked its way through Sam at the thought, and he reached for Mikaela's hand once more.

"Of course you can," Hobbs sighed, his mouth an unamused line.

"Then perhaps you _are_ a Prime," Jetfire admitted, in a sort of reluctantly surprised tone that Sam had no trouble reading as _maybe you have a chance at surviving this, after all_. "Then you must follow your mind: your map, your symbols. And I will lead the Decepticons away, so when the Fallen sends them after the traces of my space bridge they won't find you before you're ready."

"Wait-- you're leaving us? Already?" Bestia spoke up, the eldest of the NBTs sounding a little uncertain for the first time since Sam had met her.

"Leaving? Who said I was leaving?" Jetfire harrumphed again. "This is the most interesting thing to happen to me since I arrived on this wretched planet! I'm merely advancing in an alternate direction!"

With that, the weird energy that had crackled through him before their first transport rose again-- and a rush of air filled the place where Jetfire had stood with an echoing retort.

"That mech needs a thorough regimen of diagnostic programs," Ratchet muttered, shaking his head.

Brian snorted. "Well, _that_ was enlightening. Belle? You get anything yet on the location?"

The youngest NBT glanced toward Hobbs as if for reassurance that it was okay to share the information, then crossed his arms over his chest in imitation of the agent. "According to various sources, the Gulf of Aqaba was called the Dagger's Tip by an ancient civilization known as Sumer. But it is one hundred and sixty kliks in length, and twenty-four kliks wide at its widest point; further precision is impossible from such limited information."

"A lot of ground to cover," Bumblebee agreed, then flipped his radio over to a brief clip from the Proclaimers. "I would walk five hundred miles, and I would walk five hundred more...."

"Hopefully not _that_ far. I guess the easiest thing is to go to the northernmost shore of the Dagger's Tip, and see if Sam's 'feeling' corresponds with the direction the stars line up," Brian shrugged. "Everything about this journey is imprecise; sometimes you've just got to roll with it and take your best-faith guess."

Optimus nodded, the motion slow and thoughtful. True night had fallen while they'd questioned Jetfire; his big mechanical frame looked almost like it was crowned with stars. "Fate rarely calls upon us when we are prepared for it to do so," he agreed, then engaged his transformation circuits, ponderously collapsing back into his semi-truck form.

He left his door open for a moment, but Sam waved the offer away; they'd already said all they needed to say in private about the incident in the forest. If he was going to get any rest on the way to the next stress point, he was going to do it with his partners. "Nah, I'm good; I think I'll ride with Mikaela and Bee this time."

"Very well," Optimus intoned solemnly. "Autobots, roll out."

* * *

A nighttime drive in the desert proved to be an unexpectedly beautiful experience for Sam, especially after so many months on a military base on a tropical island. He'd never seen anything like it. It was also a lot colder than he was expecting, and a heck of a lot less populated than where they'd been that morning. Sam was glad he and Mikaela had had at least a little warning they'd be going up a trip; he dug some snacks out of the hastily-packed luggage Bee had managed to keep hold of, and they shared a packet of cleansing wipes to get some of the sweat and dust out of their pores. Not that freshening up was probably going to make much of a difference in the end-- but it made them _feel_ a little better, and that was enough reason.

Bee still had his connection back to NEST, too; he was only supposed to be rogue, not dead like Optimus. He relayed a text through to Mikaela's father for her, bouncing it through a bunch of satellites to obscure its origin from Decepticon tracking, then relayed back Major Lennox's extreme frustration both with the situation itself and with the hash the new National Security Advisor was trying to make of it. If Optimus had actually been dead, Sam thought Lennox might have blown a gasket trying to deal with the moron; as it was, he was determined to send as much backup as could be mustered regardless of Galloway's orders.

None of them wanted it to come to the kind of showdown that would require that backup-- but the alien cat was already out of the bag after the Fallen's broadcast, and it had escaped none of them that they'd have to go through at least one checkpoint sooner or later, depending on their ultimate destination. And probably more, considering how many countries bordered the Gulf of Aqaba. Even with Hobbs and Fuentes' DSS credentials to get them through it, there was no way they were going to be able to avoid all of the cameras, and there'd be no disguising the origins of _those_ signals. Which meant the Decepticons wouldn't be far behind them, no matter what kind of distraction Jetfire was offering.

They reached the Sinai side of the gulf just early enough to catch a brief nap, before Optimus woke them to the first pale rays of dawn casting the world in shades of somber, washed-out blue. Sam opened Bumblebee's door and propped his elbow on his friend's still-scratched roof, breath catching in his throat at the sight before him.

"Wow," Mikaela breathed, staring into the distance where the lowest of three glimmering stars just barely touched the horizon. The rest of Orion's belt speared upward from there, like a signpost pointing exactly in the direction Sam had expected. "You were right; which kind of creeps me out. How long have those clues been out there-- and how could they possibly have guessed what time of year someone would come looking?"

"Of all the things that have happened in the last couple of days, _that's_ what creeps you out?" He grinned at her, waggling his fingers in her direction. "Ineffable psychic source of an alien race, Mikaela. Maybe it _can_ see the future, or at least, I dunno, a range of potential futures? Whichever, it hasn't told me; but we'd probably better save that discussion for when we're not running for our lives."

"Right," Brian nodded. He'd propped himself against Bestia's hood, chewing his lip while Dom paced beside the 'bot with arms crossed. "Impossible quest first, potentially redefining our understanding of the universe again _afterward_. I'm not exactly an expert on this part of the world, but aren't those the mountains of Petra?"

"You mean where that big stone city was carved into the rock? The one that shows up in _Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade_?" Sam raised his eyebrows, nonplused, as he connected the obvious dots. "The one that was built _eight thousand years_ after the Allspark crash-landed on our planet?"

"And yet... you'd be pretty hard pressed to find any bigger doorways around here," Brian shook his head, mouth curved in wry amusement. "My guess? If you compare the dating on most of those old clue inscriptions, they'll turn out to date to around the time most of the city's tombs and temples were built."

Belle added his voice to the conversation there, not bothering to transform. None of the other 'bots had transformed since their stop either, or spoken aloud; Sam would guess they were just as thunderstruck about all this as the humans were, and probably more. "Direction verified, though with a significant margin of error; sightline projected by the constellation as viewed from this location does transect the city of Petra." 

"Good enough for me," Hobbs scowled through Belle's open driver-side window. "Let's get moving again, people; I don't want to be caught empty-handed when those sons of bitches catch up with us."

"Let's just hope we can figure out what to do with it when we _do_ find it," Dom growled, climbing back into Bestia. 

"And on that cheery note," Sam snarked, patting Bee on the roof as he and Mikaela returned to their seats. "Unless anyone's got a different idea-- then Jordan, here we come."

* * *

About two hours of driving later, not counting the unavoidable stops, Sam's internal compass and the star-provided directions matched up and the small group approached one of the rock-cut buildings of Petra. It did look an awful lot like the one from Indiana Jones, but to his relief, it wasn't the same one; even considering all the other insanity they were dealing with, that would have been some next-level irony. But Al Khazneh, the one from the movie, opened onto a gorge and had been dug into a giant cliff face; the land was more open around their target, the mountainside behind it was more of a slope, and there was more visible wear and tear on its carvings. Obviously, it had been less protected from the elements and human visitors over the years.

It was still apparently the second-most visited site at Petra, and the biggest overall; they called it El Deir, The Monastery. Because of _course_ a human holy site had been built on top of an alien holy object. It was going to make the political fallout of any damage they ended up causing even uglier, but there was no avoiding it. The sensation of being watched hadn't really grown any stronger during the journey, not like one of those hotter-or-colder games he'd played as a kid, but it was a lot easier to triangulate when walking a few meters to one side was enough to change the direction the pull was coming from.

"I know the archaeologists have been all over this place," he said, staring up at the massive structure with a frown, "but they must not've had the right equipment, or I guess the Primes' bodies or the Matrix itself could have been interfering with their sensors. So how do we find something that was designed not to be found? I'd rather not just blow the whole place up and hope we don't hit the thing we're looking for."

"Yeah, I'd rather we didn't either," Hobbs scowled. "You should have seen the damage the Decepticons did in Rome just before our meet-up in Italy; the fuckers actually took a drive down the Spanish Steps and landed in the Colosseum. I get how important this is, but we've lost enough human history to Cybertronian carelessness."

"I am afraid that was my responsibility; Starscream allied with the human Carrera in an attempt to set a trap for me, and I had no choice but to meet him there in an effort to minimize civilian casualties," Optimus responded, looming big and blue in front of the doorway. He was just barely taller than the massive entrance; with his feet on the sand outside, the antennae atop his helm just barely brushed the stone lintel.

"Not blaming you. But if we can minimize the damage this time, I'd appreciate it," Hobbs replied sourly.

"Ratchet?" Mikaela looked up at the chartreuse rescue Hummer. "You have more detailed scanners than most Autobots, right? Could you take a look?"

"I will make the attempt," Ratchet nodded to her, then took several steps toward the carved building. Optimus moved aside to let him through; Ratchet fit inside with a few feet to spare, raising his hands to send faint laser beams toward each of the interior walls in turn.

Sam and the rest of the humans followed him cautiously inside, accompanied by Bestia and Bumblebee. Belle took up a stance outside the doorway with Optimus to guard against intruders; Sam caught a glimpse of Hobbs patting his new friend on his plated shin as they passed, and was briefly glad to be reminded that at least _one_ thing had gone right that week. Then Ratchet paused in front of a fresco set into the stone, doing an intensive scan of the ancient painting.

"Here," he said, turning to nod to Sam. "There is an open space behind this wall."

"Can we get in without blowing it up?" Dom asked, rapping his knuckles against the stone. "I don't hear anything-- wall's gotta be at least a couple inches thick."

"I will try," Ratchet nodded, shifting his arm into the superheated saw he sometimes used in combat. Then he carefully traced the spinning blade around the edge of the fresco, continuing until he could pull it whole from the wall. There was indeed a cavity behind it, but it wasn't empty; the skeletal frame of an ancient Cybertronian curved to fill the visible space, runes carved along its long-dead limbs. 

"It's them!" Sam gasped in realization, laying a hand against the metal. "It's them I've been feeling, not the Matrix or the Fallen!"

Voices raised behind him in answer-- but Sam was no longer paying attention. Before anyone could stop him, he boosted himself up, crawling through a human-sized gap between the Prime's bones.


	5. Brian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are! Not the end of the series, but hopefully setting things up nicely for what will come next. :)

Brian swore as Sam disappeared into the wall, fixated on something none of the rest of them could perceive. There were times when the kid's special status as the favored of the Allspark was extremely handy-- but there were also times like this, when it was highly inconvenient to everyone in the immediate vicinity. 

"I'm going in after him," he said, exchanging a speaking glance with Dom, then hurried over to the opening cut in the stone and climbed up and over the exposed metal bones.

Once inside, he could see that the hidden space was bigger than he would have thought; the ancient Primes had to have been head and shoulders above even Optimus, and there were several of them buried there, just as Jetfire had explained. He couldn't imagine why anyone would just give up like that when they had to know their enemy would find them eventually-- but maybe there was something more to this place than just a tomb. He just hoped there weren't any traps, accidental or otherwise, that would harm a human; he remembered the stories of what had happened to Sam's great-great-grandfather in the Arctic.

Not that he'd let that stop him. "Sam!" he called as he climbed further in. "Hold up!"

Somewhere up ahead, a light flickered; Brian slowed his scrambling as he neared it and caught his breath at the sight of what had to be the Matrix. The ancient artefact was an elegant openwork metallic shape, about as long as his forearm but narrow enough to wrap a hand around, with a curving point at either end; a light glimmered at its center, like a Spark caught in a net of silver wire. It was lying on the flattened form of an enormous Cybertronian palm that nearly dwarfed the teenager standing next to it.

Sam looked up as Brian approached, a strangely distant expression on his face. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but maybe we ought to let one of the Autobots handle it," Brian replied, cautiously inching closer. "If it belongs to anyone, it's gotta belong to Optimus, right?"

"He'd never fit in here," Sam replied, shaking his head and glancing back down at the Matrix. "None of them would, not without tearing the whole place down. It's got to be us."

"Us?" Brian replied curiously. They were both standing within arm's length of it now; Brian couldn't feel whatever it was Sam was picking up on, but the hair was standing up on his arms, and he knew better than to think it was as harmless as it was pretty. "Don't you mean you? You're the one they like to call a Prime."

Sam snorted at that. "And I'd still be stuck on base if it wasn't for your training. Look, I'm not completely stupid; I know I'm reacting kind of weird. You handle Cybertronian tech even better than I do; I don't think it'll hurt you, and I think we'll both feel better if you help."

He could almost hear Dom's voice in the back of his mind, serving as the voice of his common sense: _shitty call, O'Conner_. But it wasn't like he had much of a choice, here. "Depends on how this goes," he joked, then let out a breath. "On three?"

"On three."

Before they got any further than that, though, a series of explosions sounded from outside; they both glanced up, startled out of their cautious tableau, and glanced toward the entry hole. It was impossible to see much beyond the narrow beam of sunlight shining through, but the big shadows moving across it in a hurry told their own story.

"Starscream!" a deep metallic voice shouted from outside, supporting that conclusion; the Decepticons had caught up to them, sooner than they'd hoped. Having Optimus with them must have sped up recognition; he'd have been easy to pick out from overhead photos, if the 'cons had hacked into government satellites.

"You cannot hide them for long, Prime!" the alien jet screeched back, followed by the sound of heavy weapons fire.

"Three," they both said together, reaching for the Matrix, and turned as one toward the door.

It felt like it looked, cool and bluntly edged metal; it also felt like it vibed, energy crackling against his palm like static electricity. Brian shuddered as they moved, hoping it would stay quiescent long enough for he and Sam to get it outside, but given the rising sounds of the battle--

He only heard the missile as it hit, threading through both the door and the hole in the wall to impact on the Primes' bones.

* * *

" _I got a feeling_ ," he remembered Dom saying, the words flashing through his mind as the world winked out.

 _Dom_ , Brian thought, flashing on his family's faces; _Jesse_. And then he thought no more.

* * *

Somewhere, somewhen, Brian opened his eyes again, with no idea how much time had passed. His hands were empty; the open sky was thronged with bronze clouds, and he was surrounded by towering metal forms more alien in appearance than any 'bot he'd ever encountered.

Around _them_ , he realized, as Sam stepped forward to join him. "Where-- where are we? Are we dead?" the teenager asked, head tilted up toward the optics of the beings looming over them.

One of the beings shifted in response, speaking in a voice as big as the landscape. "We have been watching you for a long, long time."

"Watching _me_? ...Because of the Allspark?" Sam blurted, eyes wide.

A second gigantic Cybertronian turned its optics toward Brian, ignoring Sam's question as his brother had the first. "You have fought for our people with courage and with sacrifice: the virtues of a leader. This has always been Samuel's path, should he choose it, since his ancestor's path crossed ours; but you have walked it as though it was also your own, and so earned the right to an equal share in our secret."

Brian swallowed through a throat gone dry. This was a Prime speaking; they were _all_ Primes, the ones whose bodies they'd just been scurrying over moments before. Their Sparks had stuck around somehow, on some plane separate from their corpses, the real trap in their tomb.

"The Matrix of Leadership is not found, it is earned," a third Prime intoned. "Be aware; though it can be used to active ancient artefacts, or reignite a Spark that wishes to return, it may be better used in your hands to _cleanse_ one from the corrupting touch of one who was once among our number."

"Go now," the first Prime said again, nodding to them, "and take up your destiny, young brothers."

"Brothers?!" he heard Sam blurt--

And then Brian was blinking his eyes open a second time, sprawled on the twisted shapes of the Primes' corpses.

* * *

"BRIAN!" he heard someone screaming-- Dom? Monica? Both? Their voices mixed with others, calling Sam's name, and from the stinging pain all along his side and the obvious damage all around them from the missile's impact, it was easy to guess why.

"WE'RE HERE! Fucking Starscream," Sam rasped, sitting slowly up beside him. Sam's hand was still clenched around the Matrix, too; he looked down at it, then up at Brian, face pale under the soot and blood from their ordeal. "Is it just my imagination, or were those guys saying...."

"Megatron," Brian nodded wearily as he climbed to his feet. He let go of the Matrix as he moved, remembering all the times he'd heard Optimus speak of Megatron as a brother; not in the sense of lineage, but in the sense of one who'd shared burdens with him for a time, then betrayed his trust in a way that cut to the quick even millennia later. He knew that story on a personal level, from the other side; if he hadn't been able to reconnect with Rome in Miami, he had no doubt his oldest friend would still be singing a similar tune. If the Fallen had been behind Megatron's sudden face-heel turn, not his own informed choice....

"Later," Sam shook his head, then waggled the hand holding the Matrix. "Hey, do you..."

"No, take it," Brian replied, shaking his tingling palm. "We can talk more about it later."

"Sure thing," Sam nodded. He stuffed it in his waistband like something out of an action movie, then raised a skeptical eyebrow in Brian's direction. " _Brother_."

He shuddered at that, shunting the thought away for later, then started moving again toward the sounds of battle. "WE'RE COMING OUT!"

It was harder, climbing back down, than it had been climbing in; besides the damage done to the inside of the tomb, the damage done to _them_ hadn't been completely repaired by whatever the Primes had done to revive them. The room outside had been damaged too, after all Ratchet's care; though at least the fresco still survived, propped whole against the wall.

Mikaela hurried forward as Brian emerged, reaching a hand up to him. She was the only one still there; Dom had apparently gone outside with the others. "God! You look awful. We were afraid you'd both been killed."

"Not quite yet," Brian said, with a wry curve of mouth. "We got it."

"The Matrix?" Her eyes went round at sight of it she helped Sam down next. "Wow. Is that....?"

"Yep," Sam nodded, then frowned as he glanced toward the doorway. "You know. We thought they were talking about Megatron, and maybe they were, but what if...."

"They? Sam, what's going on?" Mikaela asked again, brow furrowed.

Outside in the bright desert sun, Starscream was holding his own against Optimus, Bee, and Ratchet in melee battle, with several lower-ranking Decepticons backing him up. Belle and Bestia were holding back for lack of equally strong armor, firing ranged weapons; the other three humans stood with them, firing sabot rounds, though human-sized weapons did little damage at that distance. Megatron wasn't there, and nor was the Fallen, but there was no telling how long that situation would last, tipping the scales irreversibly in the bad guys' favor. Brian hadn't forgotten the lesson of the battle in the forest, and he doubted the others had, either.

"You think maybe Starscream...?" Brian threw a glance Sam's way. He wasn't sure what 'cleanse' meant, but if it served as even a minor distraction....

Sam nodded. "Someone has to have been pulling the strings, interacting with the big boss since Megatron went down. Someone who had to have already met him, for the Fallen to accept the arrangement. Seems like pretty good odds to me."

"And how do you expect to get it to him?"

"Cross that bridge when we get there. You guys like to say ride or die, right?" Sam grinned cheekily at him, then pressed a swift kiss to Mikaela's mouth and threw himself out of the frying pan into the fire. 

"Ride or die." Brian shook his head and hurried after him, cursing under his breath as he went.

* * *

The next several minutes were a crazed montage of dodging between Cybertronian feet, shouting at friends and enemies alike, and one very shocked Starscream shrieking in indignation and taking off into the sky seconds after Sam reached him. Whatever the Matrix had done wasn't immediately evident, but it had done _something_ , and that something tipped the balance immediately back in their direction.

Optimus gave Sam a long look at that intervention-- then turned toward Brian, inclining his head in a gesture of respect that Brian didn't really want to think about, either. He'd never asked for that kind of recognition, just the power to protect his family. Though possibly, that was what had gotten him into this situation in the first place...

Possibly, it was what had _always_ gotten him into these kinds of situations, Brian admitted wryly.

The remaining minions were easily mopped up after that, and the second the last one was down, Dom tackled him, touching his bloodstained shirt with shaking hands.

"Brian," he said, lowly. "Didn't I tell you to watch your ass? When that missile hit...."

"Yeah, well," Brian clutched him back. "Not sure what I could've done different. But luckily the old Primes were looking out for us today."

"Never again," Dom growled, pulling him in to rest their foreheads together. "You hear me, Bri? Don't care what I gotta do, you're not leaving me behind again."

Brian remembered that echoing, enormous voice saying _young brothers_ \-- and ignored it, leaning into his partner's warmth. Whatever fate had in store for 'Brian Prime' could wait. "I hear you."

Behind them, he could hear Mikaela and Sam having a similar conversation, and Hobbs and Monica, talking in low voices. Could hear the vibrations of the 'bots stomping around, dealing with the Decepticon wrecks; could see the shadow of Bestia looming over them, sheltering them both with her body. 

Megatron was still out there; so was the Fallen; and the rest of NEST was on their way to join them. But here, in this moment, he was alive; Dom was alive; and the key to saving the world was in their grasp.

Brian pressed his mouth against Dom's, and seized the moment.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [An Energy Like No Other [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2568581) by [Opalsong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalsong/pseuds/Opalsong)
  * [An Energy Like No Other [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11077803) by [Opalsong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalsong/pseuds/Opalsong)




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